Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender age of two. She moves through life with a hardy resilience, even as a bloody war approaches. Narrator Lisette Lecat reads this remarkable memoir of a family clinging to a harsh landscape and the dying tenets of colonialism.

Leaving Before the Rains Come

As her marriage collapses, the author of the international best-seller Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight relearns the fearless ways of her father to find her own true north. Standing in the wreckage of her marriage, in her adopted country America, Alexandra Fuller revisits the continent she loves and finds in her father's harsh, simple, and uncompromising ways the key to her salvation.

Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier

When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger". Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war.

Great Catherine: The Life of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia

Prize-winning historian and biographer, Carolly Erickson has created an eminently readable biography that recognizes the humanity of Great Catherine—Empress of Russia—with her majesty and immense capability. Dispelling some of the myths surrounding her voracious sexual appetite, the biographer portrays Catherine as a lonely woman far ahead of her time—achieving greatness in an era when women were executed on a husband’s whim.

Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son

In this remarkable dual memoir, film legend Martin Sheen and accomplished actor/filmmaker Emilio Estevez recount their lives as father and son. In alternating chapters—and in voices that are as eloquent as they are different—they narrate stories spanning more than 50 years of family history, and reflect on their journeys into two different kinds of faith.

The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England

Organized as a travel guide for the time-hopping tourist, The Time-Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England is an entertaining popular history with a twist. Historian Ian Mortimer reveals in delightful (and occasionally disturbing) detail how the streets and homes of 16th century looked, sounded, and smelled for both peasants and for royals; what people wore and ate; how they were punished for crimes and treated for diseases; and the complex and contradictory Elizabethan attitudes toward violence, class, sex, and religion.

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians - many of them young women from small towns across the South - were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.

Fed, White, and Blue: Finding America with My Fork

Simon Majumdar is probably not your typical idea of an immigrant. As he says, "I'm well rested, not particularly poor, and the only time I ever encounter 'huddled masses' is in line at Costco." But immigrate he did, and thanks to a Homeland Security agent who asked if he planned to make it official, the journey chronicled in Fed, White, and Blue was born. In it, Simon sets off on a trek across the United States to find out what it really means to become an American, using what he knows best: food.

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Based on four years of intensive primary document research, Lawrence in Arabiadefinitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.

The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

The 15th century saw the longest and bloodiest series of civil wars in British history. The crown of England changed hands five times as two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule. Now, celebrated historian Dan Jones describes how the longest reigning British royal family tore itself apart until it was finally replaced by the Tudors. Some of the greatest heroes and villains in history were thrown together in these turbulent times.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Sarah Vowell travels through the American past and investigates the dusty, bumpy roads of her own life. Her essays confront a wide range of subjects, icons, and historical moments: Ike, Teddy Roosevelt, and Bill Clinton; Canadian Mounties and German Filmmakers; Tom Cruise and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; twins and nerds; the Gettysburg Address, the State of the Union, and George W. Bush's inauguration. The result is an engrossing audiobook, capturing Vowell's memorable wit and her keen social commentary.

The Wordy Shipmates

Sarah Vowell's special brand of armchair history makes the bizarre and esoteric fascinatingly relevant and fun. She takes us from the modern-day reenactment of an Indian massacre to the Mohegan Sun casino, from old-timey Puritan poetry, where "righteousness" is rhymed with "wilderness," to a Mayflower-themed waterslide. Throughout, The Wordy Shipmates is rich in historical fact, humorous insight, and social commentary by one of America's most celebrated voices.

Raising My Rainbow is Lori Duron’s frank, heartfelt, and brutally funny account of her and her family's adventures of distress and happiness raising a gender-creative son. Whereas her older son, Chase, is a Lego-loving, sports-playing boy's boy, her younger son, C.J., would much rather twirl around in a pink sparkly tutu, with a Disney Princess in each hand while singing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi".

Tender Is the Night

Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.

The Bonobo and the Atheist

In this lively and illuminating discussion of his landmark research, esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal argues that human morality is not imposed from above but instead comes from within. Moral behavior does not begin and end with religion but is in fact a product of evolution. For many years, de Waal has observed chimpanzees soothe distressed neighbors and bonobos share their food. Now he delivers fascinating fresh evidence for the seeds of ethical behavior in primate societies that further cements the case for the biological origins of human fairness.

Christian Bonnell says:"Great research on apes, bad research on humans"

The Education of Little Tree

The Education of Little Tree tells of a boy orphaned very young, who is adopted by his Cherokee grandmother and half-Cherokee grandfather in the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee during the Great Depression. Little Tree" as his grandparents call him is shown how to hunt and survive in the mountains, to respect nature in the Cherokee Way, taking only what is needed, leaving the rest for nature to run its course.

The Good Father

Four years ago, 19-year-old Travis Brown made a choice: to raise his newborn daughter on his own. While most of his friends were out partying and meeting girls, Travis was at home, changing diapers and worrying about keeping food on the table. But he's never regretted his decision. Bella is the light of his life. The reason behind every move he makes. And so far, she is fed. Cared for. Safe. But when Travis loses his construction job and his home, the security he's worked so hard to create for Bella begins to crumble....

Commonwealth

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

The Time Between

Eleanor Murray will always remember her childhood on Edisto Island, where her late father, a local shrimper, shared her passion for music. Now her memories of him are all that tempers the guilt she feels over the accident that put her sister in a wheelchair and the feelings she harbors for her sister's husband. To help support her sister, Eleanor works at a Charleston investment firm during the day, but she escapes into her music, playing piano at a neighborhood bar. Until the night her enigmatic boss walks in and offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt, Helena, back on Edisto.

Eisenhower in War and Peace

Author of the best-seller FDR, Jean Edward Smith is a master of the presidential biography. Setting his sights on Dwight D. Eisenhower, Smith delivers a rich account of Eisenhower’s life using previously untapped primary sources. From the military service in WWII that launched his career to the shrewd political decisions that kept America out of wars with the Soviet Union and China, Smith reveals a man who never faltered in his dedication to serving America, whether in times of war or peace.

The Spy's Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia

Jim Nicholson was one of the CIA's top veteran case officers. By day he taught spycraft at the CIA's clandestine training center, The Farm. By night he was a minivan-driving single father racing home to have dinner with his kids. But Nicholson led a double life. For more than two years, he had met covertly with agents of Russia's foreign intelligence service and turned over troves of classified documents. In 1997 Nicholson became the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage.

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights.

Detroit: An American Autopsy

In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age - mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs - Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation that only a native son can possess, journalist Charlie LeDuff sets out to uncover what has brought low this once-vibrant city, his city.

The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience

We know of psychopaths from chilling headlines and stories in the news and movies - from Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy to Hannibal Lecter and Dexter Morgan. As Dr. Kent Kiehl shows, psychopaths can be identified by a checklist of symptoms that includes pathological lying; lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse; grandiose sense of self-worth; manipulation; and failure to accept one’s actions. But why do psychopaths behave the way they do? Is it the result of their environment - how they were raised - or is there a genetic component to their lack of conscience?

Publisher's Summary

Alexandra Fuller won worldwide attention, popular acclaim, and critical accolades for her memoir of her childhood in Africa, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. This engaging follow-up explores Fuller’s parents’ childhoods and charts the trajectories of their lives through all the British couple’s experiences in war-torn Africa.

Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother's childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father's English childhood; and the darker, civil war- torn Africa of her own childhood. At its heart, this is the story of Fuller's mother, Nicola. Born on the Scottish Isle of Skye and raised in Kenya, Nicola holds dear the kinds of values most likely to get you hurt or killed in Africa: loyalty to blood, passion for land, and a holy belief in the restorative power of all animals. Fuller interviewed her mother at length and has captured her inimitable voice with remarkable precision. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is as funny, terrifying, exotic, and unselfconscious as Nicola herself.

Fuller's white British-born parents loved their life in colonial Africa until the war for independence forced them to leave Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, but not Africa. Their story reads like a pioneer saga, full of reckless courage and passionate relationships set against a backdrop of natural beauty and political turmoil. In this second story of her childhood, Fuller, who now lives in America, paints a vivid picture of her inimitable mother, who was as devoted to her Scottish heritage as to the African land she farmed with her husband. If only Katherine Hepburn were alive to play her on screen! We see the mother's British-colonial sensibilities and experiences viewed through her daughter's more critical but loving eyes. I kept wanting to take a break to learn more about the Rhodesian civil war, but I couldn't leave the book. Both Amato, the reader (her some-kind-of-British accent charmed my American ears), and Fuller bring the story and characters alive, balancing tragedy with humor. After listening to this, I began reading Fuller's earlier memoir, "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" on my Kindle, and then picked up "Scribbling the Cat," about a white African soldier, in old-fashioned book form. Reading in print helped me appreciate Fuller's lyrical style and colorful slang ("Cat" has a glossary in the back), but I plan to listen to them all. In any format they're all terrific--you learn, you laugh, you are moved. What more can a reader ask?

What other book might you compare Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness to and why?

"West with the Night" (the first audiobook I ever listened to--I was hooked) and Jeannette Walls' "Half-Broke Horses"

What about Bianca Amato???s performance did you like?

Her skill with reading dialogue, her light touch with humor, and her ability to shift tone subtly, without melodrama, during heavier parts.

I was a little leery at first, approaching this novel, having been bowled over by Fuller's initial star effort "Dogs" but also being slightly disappointed by Fuller's follow-on work. This book is a perfect compliment to "Dogs", full of insight, compassion, grit and finally, courageous in depicting one's irrepressible mother with such fierce honesty yet admiring love and by being, thank goodness, free of victimhood. I was hoping that Lisette Lescat would once again be the narrator, but Bianca Amato more than measures up to the task. Bravos all around!!

Great, fun read, and informative read. This book provides insight into a bit of colonialism, Africa, and relations among peoples and families. More importantly it provides a great insight into what life was like during Colonial times in Rhodesia or Kenya. Fuller writes about her family, their dreams, their lives, and their faults with frankness and love. I bought this book during one of their sales and I was not disappointed. Though I did not read her first book "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" I was able to thoroughly enjoy this book. If you thought your childhood was tough, or your family was eccentric read this book and you will realize that maybe your life was relatively normal. The performance is not 5 stars because the narrator's voice, or accent takes a little getting used to.

But so much more. I expected a quirky story of a white European family living in Africa. That's what this is, alright, intertwined with the story of the traumatic growing pains which accompanied the declarations of independence by several African countries in the 1960's, tragic accidents, lack of good medical care, grief, and depression. But overall, the story of courage to keep going, to keep living, to keep working, loving, moving forward. And ... to have another glass of wine. Beautifully read (and sung)!

What made the experience of listening to Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness the most enjoyable?

I love the truth and relationship between the family members. For the main character to have the nickname of a monkey is just the beginning of the joy, not fun, buy heartfelt joy of reading this book. The narator did a fantastic job and made the book even more enjoyable. I remember as a kid hearing of the wars in Africa between the ruling whites and the majority blacks, but this book gives you a feeling of life in that world.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I love the Mom. She is both as trong character and so fragile psychologically. I love that she tries to make a family of artist during the trying time of war

Have you listened to any of Bianca Amato’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

This book would not be nearly as interest without Biance. I found that her reading made the book for me. Out of my hundreds of audio books I have listened to she is probably the finest reader I have heard.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes. I could not stop. I listened to it while driving to work, at the gym or even sitting in my driveway before going in for the night. I could not put it down.

Any additional comments?

I had not listened to Ms. Fuller works before but now have all her audible works on my wish list which I will buy each month. She is like great candy and I will pace myself to enjoy her over the longest time possible. I strogly suggest this work.

Where does Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of my favorites.

What did you like best about this story?

Having traveled a little in Zimbabwe I was fascinated with the country and especially how it transitioned from British-led Rhodesia.

Which scene was your favorite?

Nicola (the author's mother) winning her first horse show on a borrowed horse that no-one else could manage,

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Yes, there are three particularly devastating events, but listing them would be a spoiler.

Any additional comments?

The book is written from the POV of the grown daughter who returns to Africa to interview her parents and track down her mother's colorful past. It is beautifully read by Bianca Amato. I kept thinking the author herself was telling the story.

After having listened to "Don't Lets Go To The Dogs Tonight", I was delighted to see the story continue with "Under The Tree of Forgetfullness". This second book was excellent; as it was able to take you deeper into the incidents and personalities of the Fuller Family! The true life story about the authors life while growing up in Africa was engaging, witty, and very informational. The narration by Bianca Amato was top notch! Bianca is a brilliant narrator whose voice and song captivate you while drawing you into the story. Under The Tree of Forgetfullness was a 5 Star experience for me all the way around!